Dogs offer us unconditional love: It’s a truism, and a recurring theme of our reader submissions about the dogs who changed their lives/for whom they decided their lives were, finally, worth changing. But reading these tender tributes, I saw something else, too. It’s not just that a dog loves unconditionally; a dog needs love, too, and care —sometimes quite a lot of it. Dogs offered our readers the opportunity both to extend and to accept that love and care. Their dogs loved them and they also needed them, and so they became the people their dogs loved and needed them to be. We are constantly changing each other; it’s a feedback loop. What an enormous, beautiful, terrifying thing. Onto the stories — and pictures! — from our readers. —TSB Editor

By The Small Bow Family Orchestra

The first time I was in treatment, I was sitting in group at Hazelden, and one of the guys joked, “Dave’s higher power is his dog.” The counselor leading group bristled, but my friend was right. That was 3 dogs ago (RIP Lexi and Teiko). I’ve been in recovery since ’05, and though I’ve been sober most of that time, my course has not been linear, and the one constant, not a sponsor or spouse or parent, has been my dogs. I’ve always had support and love, but unconditional? I think not. Except for the canines. My supporters were always there to cheer me on and encourage me when things were going good, or I was doing things the way that they believed they should be done, but what happens when the wheels fall off, when we’re alone, scared, and there’s a global pandemic killing millions? It’s December 2020, I’ve relapsed, and now I am lying drunk on the cold tile of my kitchen floor, naked, alone, and thinking of how if I were just a little more courageous, this could be over in an instant. There’s no saving me from myself, right? That’s when Smudge comes in, and reminds me that I’m lovable and needed and not alone. I’d called a few people, the ones who said they’d always be there, the ones I was there for, but they didn’t answer. She starts licking my tears and smiling that goofy-ass smile, like she can see the real me through the haze of intoxication, not the broken mass splayed out before her, but the loving nurturer beneath. I still need people, and my recovery today looks a lot different than it has in the past, but dogs, not people, have been there with me through it all. They said my dog couldn’t be my higher power, but I’m here to tell you that that isn’t true. My dog saved my life, as did NA, AA, and all of you. But when y’all weren’t there, she was, and I’m alive and sober today because of her. In that moment, she and she alone could save me, and she did, just by being herself, doing what she was born to do. Dog, God, what’s the difference?

Angela Basset Hound has been with me through the end of the garbagehead era and into sobriety, through my dad and brother dying. I’ve taken her everywhere she’s allowed to go: the Oregon coast, Acadia National Park, the hardware store where she thinks she’s an employee. She’s getting up there in years, and needs a lot of meds that used to call my name. Chopping up pills was uncomfortable at first, and arguing with the pharmacist can be a trigger. It’s all part of a daily devotion: waking up at all hours to help her outside, cooking special food for her, frequent vet trips, dog insurance — all these things I wasn’t able to do for either of us when I first got her. 

I’ll be 100% crushed when she dies, but it’s shown me how to care for an aging being. And she doesn’t seem interested in heading to the After just yet. The homemade meals are pretty good. 

I found Scar wandering around our apartment complex tennis courts, just a few days shy of my one-year anniversary. It was clear he’d been outside for a while, eyes caked, an oily back from hiding under cars, and gnarly scars on his back leg. An 8-pound Chihuahua, maybe mixed with something else. We already had three dogs in our two-bedroom apartment, but since I wasn’t drunk all the time anymore, I couldn’t leave him to fend for himself. I cornered him into the tennis courts and sat with him until he would come close enough for me to pick him up. Off to the vet, and while he was chipped, it was never registered. So home he came. He became part of the pack, the only boy, and finally I wasn’t the only guy in the house. It took him a while to warm up to my girlfriend, but he bonded to me quickly. This was when I decided I didn’t want him to suffer and fight like he did on the streets. We bought a house with a yard, paid for special food for his teeth, and I can’t say no to any of it. He’s become my sober dog, my buddy, the only dog we have that’s never seen me drunk.  While he’s starting to get whiter now and we don’t know how old he is, I know that today he’s one of the reasons I don’t pick up a drink.

I’m not sure my dog became my Higher Power, but the first dog I lost in sobriety was the same one who got me to realize I needed to stop drinking. One of the most shameful acts of my drinking career involved that dog. Her name was Lily, picked up on impulse at the pound because I was mad at my husband. This was back when I’d nurse a resentment with a couple bottles of wine and then plot my revenge. I did this twice with new dogs, several times with horses. She and I traversed many, many miles together, and she was the best listener and my best friend. I was five years sober when her old soul told me it was time to put her down.

I was lucky to have a job where I could take Lily with me, and I used to like to stay late at work to “catch up on things” — aka drink wine by myself. One morning after one of these nights, I woke up and couldn’t find her. I looked all over the house, calling for her in a panic. Then it finally hit me. I went out to my truck and there she was. I’d been so drunk that I’d left her in there overnight. That poor animal. I wanted to gouge my eyes out.

That, and an incident with my kids two weeks later, was my alcoholic bottom. I took my last drink on August 27, 2014 and have been sober ever since. The day I decided to put her down, I called one of the friends I made in my first home group to come over. She was the one who’d gotten me through the first Christmas party I had to go to in sobriety. I’d called her on the way there and said I didn’t think I could get through it sober. She said, “If you drink, I will be SO MAD at you!!” I laughed and she made me promise that if I wanted to drink I’d call her so she could yell at me.

So for Lily, we lit a candle, surrounded her with photos of all the other animals I’ve had, wrapped her in one of my mom’s quilts, and said the Serenity Prayer. It was peaceful and beautiful in that heart wrenching way. RIP Lily and I am so, so sorry — but thank you for helping me get sober.

Sobriety with your dog: Is that a marriage made in heaven or what? You may have been like me coming to a new city where you knew no one. What you brought with you fit in your Subaru. But with a few years of sobriety under my belt and with hundreds of possible meetings available I knew where to go every day. Where else did I go everyday? The dog park! And Isabel (the dog) was even better at showing up and making friends than I was. Thirteen years later I still have my sobriety and the best friends I met in the program and at the dog park. Isabel made it to 13 and died in 2020. And yes I have a new dog, Juniper, who always shows up and again makes more friends than I do!

When I hit 90 days of sobriety, I rescued a dog. I was 36, living with my elderly mother after resigning from a job I was definitely going to get fired from anyway. I had been drinking from a wine bottle for three years straight in my office, and everyone knew it. I found Gracie on a rescue site in Tennessee. I chose her because a bartender once told me their Catahoula had lived to 16. Even though I asked the rescue rep, “Is she special?” because she had a shifty pose and a faraway look in her eye, I arranged to meet her at a truck stop in Connecticut with my last rehab love. He OD’d three months later.

Gracie was grateful to have a home, and I was grateful to have a friend because no one wanted to be around me anymore. Two weeks in, she got hit by a car. She survived, and from then on, she never left my side. I somehow convinced group conscience to allow her in my homegroup meetings, where she ate cake scraps off church hall floors, and she sat in the boat watching carefully while I shellfished for my recovery job. She was stubborn and did what she wanted, and asked for forgiveness later. Just like me.

Not even five months after getting Gracie, I relapsed. I was at an all-time low with round-the-clock, blackout drinking. I stole cars and racked up three OUIs in 18 months. Massachusetts threw me in prison for 90 days. When the local police would find me passed out on the beach, Gracie was always standing watch over me. Sometimes I would wake up from a blackout, lying half in and half out of her crate, with her lying in my bed with her watchful eyes on me, making sure I was alive.

After a really bad run in July 2019, I lay on the floor crying to God to kill me or save me. Either way, I was ready. Gracie came over and licked my tears, and all I heard was, “Go take her for a walk.” So that’s what I did. We walked epically long walks until it was time to sleep and do it all over again. Eventually, I got a year. Now I am six years sober.

Gracie is somewhere between 12 and 14. She has gone all white and has a hard time getting up. I sit with her in the dunes now because she can’t run the beaches anymore. Every day with her is a living amends. I wake at 5 am and carry her outside. I give her cheese even though she shouldn’t have it. I break down crying daily, thinking about losing her. She looks deeply at me, and I can hear her tell me we will always be together. I believe it. Stranger things have happened, like me getting sober.

When I was new to sobriety I learned I needed something to fill the void. My life was being given back to me, but without alcohol and drugs what was I to do?

Knowing dogs are among the greatest things on earth, I volunteered at my local county animal shelter and spent the next six years with all the dogs. Teacup chihuahuas, massive mastiffs and every Canis Lupis in between. I learned to care again about something besides my own wounded ego. In the first two months I was bitten twice and required medical attention, but nothing could keep me from my appointed rounds. Among the dogs (and staff) I began to regain my own humanity. 

Thanks to maintaining my sobriety, I have my own dog walking business now. How great is that? 

Several times a month a friend and I conduct a secular 12-step meeting at a treatment center, and someone will often ask “What do you use as your higher power?”

I unhesitatingly say Dogs, and I mean it.

With three years of sobriety I decided, “Why not fuck up entirely what’s left of my fucked up life and adopt a rescue?" “

I knew a guy who rehabbed hunting dogs. After bringing Roy home . . . to the burbs . . . he ate his crate, ripped the velvet curtains off my walls, shredded the furniture to pulp, nibbled the trim off my walls. He aimed for the corners of my cheap wall art and then peed tsunamis. 

I’m down for troubled animals, troubled people, trouble. But Roy was a German Shorthair Pointer which research would have shown was a bad fit. But being an early-stage sober alcoholic limited my judgment. 

We found him a farm with a hunter on it. 

I wept for a month every time I thought of him and my pulverized family room. 

And then the gouge in my heart needed healing. After 40 years of drinking and then cold turkey . . . I had lost a lot of friends and family. Loneliness has a way of making us do desperate shit. 

A dog can’t replace the emotional history we have with siblings and parents and 35-year friendships . . . even the toxic, fucked up dysfunctional kind. So even a naughty dog would be better than no dog. 

When Sherlock Bones became available for adoption, I pounced.

A magnificent specimen, Bob (renamed after my dad) is Black Lab mixed with Blood Hound with the girth and food aggression of a pissed off hippo. Do not mess with his food, the shelter dude reminded me on the way out. 

No matter. Our souls are soldered together. If I go, he comes with. If I sleep, he sleeps. If I’m lost, he finds me. If I’m too busy for him, he doesn’t give a shit. He reminds me I chose him as he jams his giant ass right into my knee sockets and climbs up for a hug. He’s my rescue and I am his.

I’m his person. He’s my boy.

Champ, changed me for the better.

I was 26 and newly eloped to a fellow addict when my mom killed herself. I know it’s accepted to use the term, “died by suicide,” but applying this terminology to my mother would take away the agency of her last act. My new husband and I were junkies and though I shirked all responsibilities aside from procuring more heroin, I continued to attend sessions with a psychiatrist. This psychiatrist explained how damaging it is to lose a mother to suicide since via nature and societal nurturing expectations one’s mother “should”' love one unconditionally. My shrink told me to get a dog — a dog also loves one unconditionally.

I fell in love with a beautiful, brown eyed, spotted pit bull puppy, and this dog saved my life.

It took seven more years for me to become sober, but the time I spent with Diablito was time away from using. During the deepest uncaring depths of depression, I still got up every day to walk Diablito — or did he walk me? More than once I chose withdrawal over the option of obtaining dope through illegality — theft, robbery or whatever; because I worried what would happen to Diablito if I didn’t come home to him.

One day, Diablito and I were visiting my estranged husband — in addition to all the drugs we used, he was also a heavy drinker — and he looked horrible. The whites of his eyes were yellowing and his once gorgeous hair was falling out. I could see he was dying. Add him to the list of overdoses and suicides, I thought. But also, finally, I decided I’d had enough of this way of life. 

Around day 60 of sobriety, Diablito stopped eating. I knew something serious was wrong. I noticed a growth on his neck. He had cancer and 20 days later he literally died in my arms. I promised him I wouldn't relapse. I’ve been sober for 12 years, and I know this sounds crazy, but I believed it then and I believe it now: That dog sacrificed himself so I could live anew.

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDITH ZIMMERMAN